I got a good laugh out of this. Okay, back story: on January 22, Ashin posted the following on his blog:

“Good weather in the winter is like a little bag of chocolate,
in an instant it’s enjoyed and gone.

It’s been so long since I’ve come here to hang out!
I’ve discovered an interesting new function (Sina Engineers, thanks for your hard work…)
Enough, let’s just get right to trying out this function.

Having seen our travels in the US up to this point,
I believe everyone has discovered that Mayday’s athletic capability is only so-so, our footwork skill mediocre,
but every one of us can talk big.

The soul of an American football team is the quarterback.
Becoming the quarterback of the team is the honor of a lifetime.

But within Mayday, who would make the best quarterback?

Now it’s time to pose the question to the masses.
Please vote, everybody,
who? Who is the best quarterback.

Also, everyone please leave a message to tell me,
in Mayday’s American football adventure,
who… said something really classic (I’ve made a lot of notes on this)

Tomorrow I’ll reveal more of the crazy stories from that trip!”

So that was the January 22 entry. In the poll that followed, he only offered his name and Stone’s in their original forms; instead of Guanyou, he wrote “Old Liu” (Liu being Guanyou’s surname, of course), he also changed the second character on both Monster’s and Masa’s names. Ashin won the poll, but there were votes for others as well. Then, on January 26 (which I, admittedly, just read yesterday) he writes this:

“The so-called ‘who is the quarterback vote’ has already reached a conclusion.
Ashin won by 65% with 9700 votes.

Although many people left messages offering their congratulations,
I am very dissatisfied with these results!

It’s as though you came to MY house for dinner
but you kept praising someone else’s child.

It turns out that 35% of the voters were just that tactless.
It’s just awful.

So I decided to try the vote all over again.”

This time, Ashin’s voting board gave you five options: Ashin, Ashin, Ashin, Ashin or Ashin. The fifth Ashin is winning, but I’ll admit I voted for the second.

*** The Minnesota Vikings just lost yet another NFC Championship game on Sunday, by a field goal in overtime, though it really should not have come to that. Quarterback Brett Favre threw a game-ending interception that took the Vikings out of field goal range in regulation, but that was after an impressively stupid 12-men on the field penalty that sent them backwards, and multiple fumbles from Adrian Peterson – I love you, Adrian, but would you PLEASE learn to hold on to the damn ball – and even the normally reliable Percy Harvin. It was a heartbreaker, I tell you. But really, not a good reason for you all not to swear over your undying loyalty to the Vikings. If nothing else, cheering for my team will teach you patience and forbearance, which in the end will make you a better person. Really.

For the second year running, Mayday will play at the Kaohsiung lantern festival. Anyone who missed their concert on December 5th can enjoy the free, hour-long show on March 7.

Stay Real is outfitting Korean boy bands in their “rock-like” music videos. Exposure any way you can get it, I suppose, but there are far too many manufactured Korean boy bands on the scene, so it is hard to imagine each new one getting much attention.

Speaking of the StayReal brand, Magic Power, a band on the B’in Music label, recently went to Ximending to spray graffiti on Ashin’s StayReal store there. When they were all done, though, they posed for a picture with their new “art” and did such a bad job of setting up the band in the picture that they obscured much of their hard work. Ashin teasingly called them “inexperienced” (a term loaded with other meanings). They joked with fans later that they’ve been trying to improve their work to avoid this kind of situation in the future.

Just in case you thought the discussions of Masa and Fish were over now that she’s getting married, here’s a story that talks about Masa’s plans to attend Fish’s wedding (the whole company will be attending, he notes. They have work connections beyond anything personal). Well, maybe after the wedding the stories will cease. Fish has received her wedding dress ordered in New York, so she says she really feels like she’s getting married now. (Also in that article: are Cowboy Jay and Jolin back together? I don’t really care, personally.)

When it comes to concert sales, Mayday “won” the year of the Ox in Taiwan, performing five larger concerts to over 90,000 people on the island, in addition to all their campus appearances. The year of the Tiger, on the other hand, will belong to people like A-mei, who are gearing up for big local tours.

…and it should be obvious by now that probably the most compelling reason for the long lag between posts is that I haven’t read any Mandopop news I actually found all that interesting lately. I’ll have to check in with the rest of the crowd I like and see if there’s anything fun to talk about.

East Coast:

[Side note: Superband finishes touring in China early in 2010, but according to that site, they're heading to Mohegan Sun on April 21 for one last hurrah! Okay, between the two I'm so sad I won't be in the US in April.]

West Coast:

Okay, people, promise me you’ll report back! I can’t get there then, my sister will be visiting in early April, and my classes are back in session by the later dates.

1. Cheer Chen (陳綺貞), Immortal (太陽)
2. Deserts Chang (張懸), A City (城市)
3. Tizzy Bac, If I See Hell, I Won’t Fear the Devil (如果看見地獄，我就不怕魔鬼)
4. Tanya Chua (蔡健雅), If You See Him (若你碰到他)
5. Mrs. This (這位太太), Am I Not Good Enough (我是不是還不夠好 )
6. Won Fu (旺福), Won Fu Loves You (旺福愛你)
7. Joanna Wang, Joanna & 王若琳
8. sodagreen (蘇打綠), Daylight of Spring / Fever – Heat of Summer (春.日光/ 夏.狂熱)**
9. Totem Band (圖騰), Shepherd Child (放羊的孩子)
10. David Tao (陶喆), Opus 69 (六九樂章)

Honorable Mention: Superband (縱貫線), North Bound Mega EP (北[上]列車). It didn’t make the list because it’s only an EP (albeit a six-song “mega” EP), not a full album. But seriously, “Desperado” is fantastic, as is pretty much anything those four men touch. I smile every time I remember their concert in Chengdu.

**To be totally honest, I’m not sure if sodagreen’s Spring or Summer would make the list by itself on its own merits, but my iPod playlist that combines the two and leaves out the really bizarre English sections from the latter album is pretty great, so I cheated and included them as a duo. I continue to suspect that all the “Vivaldi Project” albums together will probably equal either one stellar disc or a great two-disc set… leaving the rest of the songs inescapably as filler. Thanks to Xinyi, though, sodagreen is part of the Girl Power trend, making it an impressive 8 out of 10. Compared to my list from last year (below), that’s a HUGE change.

Now, I’m sure there were other fantastic albums released last year, but these are my top ten based on what I know and have heard. Somehow, even living in China has not prevented me from being perpetually behind on new releases, probably because I work to much. (And that, by the way, is the Official Blogging Theme of 2009, because my post count was way down this year. My new year’s resolution: post when I can, and stop making excuses for the rest of the time.) But anyway….. what good albums did I miss??

Now, just because I never did manage to post it, here’s my list of my top ten album purchases in 2008:

1. Mayday (五月天), Poetry of the Day After (後。青春期的詩)
2. Fusion, If the Future (如果未來)
3. P.K.14, City Weather Sailing (城市天氣航行)
4. backQuarter (四分衛), World (世界)
5. 1976, Asteroid (這個星球)
6. Milk@Coffee (牛奶@咖啡), The Older, the Lonelier（越长大越孤单）
7. Crowd Lu (盧廣種), 100 Ways of Living (100種生活)
8. sodagreen (蘇打綠), Sing With Me (陪我歌唱)
9. Cape No. 7 Original Movie Soundtrack (海角七號 電影原聲帶)
10. 13 Band （拾參樂團), The Horse-Faced Sailor’s Summer (馬臉水手的夏天）

Honorable Mentions: Xu Wei (许巍), Love Like Youth (爱如少年). The Bob Dylan of mainland Mando-rock/pop/easy listening. Leehom Wang (王力宏), Heart.Beat (心。跳). Half cheesy pop, lots of dodgy lyrics, some innovations that don’t quite work, but man, the boy can sing. And he is constantly reinventing himself, which I admire and respect even when I don’t like the outcome.

Albums I’m looking for in 2010: Fusion’s second album will come out eventually, right? Leehom should be releasing something new soon, and he’s supposedly staying with the “chinked-out rock” concept, which I like in theory even if I cannot stand the first effort (”What’s Wrong with Rock… and the whole world when I’m hearing this song…”). Autumn and/or Winter should be on deck from sodagreen over the course of the year (late in the year, I’d imagine). I haven’t seen Peng Tan’s acoustic album (slated for December) yet, so we’ll see when that materializes. Hmm, I must be missing people, but I’m not sure who. Certain cowboys who shall remain nameless have albums coming in the next two months, but that’s more of a “can’t turn away from a train wreck” curiosity than actual anticipation.

1. Ashin is filming awkwardly “romantic” scenes with new girls he can’t quite look straight in the eye again; this time, it’s a 7-Eleven commercial with Penny Patty Hou and there’s no kissing, so the attempt is at least respectable. (Except when he’s supposed to have his arms around her in the print ad; sad, Ashin, so NOT rock-n-roll!) Penny Patty, on the other hand, gets all the best gigs ever since she had the good sense to get dumped by Cowboy Jay; she also sang with A-yue back on his OK album. I think her star continues to rise. Also, 7-Eleven commercials seem to provide a very rare opportunity to see Ashin out of clothing with large cartoon bears or Hello Kitty on it.

2. Ashin was, however, running around rehearsing for the Taipei New Year’s concert in the official Bad Pants Choice ‘09, the jeans with the words “StayReal” in huge letters across the ass. In 2010, Ashin, Just Say No to dodgy denims. I’m very busy, but I’d be willing to consult if it would keep you away from these poor choices in trousers. (Apologies if you started watching that and got blasted with an unexpected bout of S.H.E. halfheartedly singing along with their soundtrack.)

3. Most of the news this week was taken over by the annual “who was performing where on New Year’s” thing, which is always just a little bit dull. But, spicing things up a bit this year, here’s sodagreen’s performance on the Jiangsu Satellite Television New Year’s Show, which was broadcast the other night (even if it wasn’t taped, then, ahem. Sodagreen was performing in Guangzhou for the night itself). That show was headlined by the Superband, offering the nation an opportunity to ogle A-yue, which essentially means it was fifty-thousand times better than the Hunan Satellite Television New Year’s show, which was mostly boy bands and poplets. *sigh* If only the Jiangsu Satellite Television New Year’s show had been on New Year’s, and, you know, in Jiangsu. I could have pilgrimaged out to see all my favorite boys (and Xinyi).

4. Speculation is flying over the girl accompanying Leehom out to the New Year’s concerts. This, of course, is a favorite party game: who is Leehom dating? (Played with the accompanying bonus round, “Is Leehom gay?” which he then periodically denies in song.) Well, rest assured fangirls, it was his cousin. (Um, yawn.) In that article he also talks about seeing his nieces and nephews, who are still small but have clearly defined gender roles: the boys like trains and cars and the girls like princess outfits and ballet dancing. Suggestion, Uncle Leehom: buy those girls a cool science kit. They’ll thank you later. (Leehom has some interesting stuff going on right now; his movie with Jackie Chan is coming out at some point, he’s the spokesman for the Taipei pavilion at the Shanghai Expo next year, and he recently recorded a duet with Teresa Teng to serve as the theme song for the pavilion. She’s been gone for many years, of course, but modern technology is a wonderful thing. Coincidentally, I *also* love Taipei.)

Then, of course, in every bit of consistency there must be at least one glaring exception; oh, but my dears, what an exception.

Cowboy Jay did not release an album in 2009.

Oh, it’s glorious. A year without him dominating the awards ceremonies in spite of all the reasons why his latest album is derivative and boring and totally undeserving. Ah, the sound of silence. And to think I mocked his acting career; I take it all back. Sadly, I think he’s going to hit us early in 2010, and even more sadly, he supposedly wrote his latest in his “free time” while recording two films and a panda-themed superhero soap opera, which in general does not bode well. But I remain hopeful that the pattern of knee-jerk accolades will have been broken, and we will return to the early years when Cowboy Jay was actually – *gasp* – judged on his merits. Oh, I can hope.

Episode 4, which I watched here:

Episode 5, seen here:

Yeah, Ashin: don’t quit your day job. Guanyou is a much better drummer.

Episode 6, seen here:

I wonder if they’ll broadcast it this week? It seems unlikely many people will be watching this instead of the New Year’s specials. Well, I’ll check on it anyway.

Mayday is in Shanghai this week, playing Christmas concerts with a little help from their growing numbers of friends who are label-mates. Once the home of only five acts, B’in Music has almost doubled in size with the signing of bands Cosmos People, Magic Power, and (whoa) Won Fu. (That last one is way cool… and one I almost sorta kinda saw coming. I mean, Won Fu was using their studio, borrowing drum sets and not returning them and the like.) They’ve also added solo artist Yen-j to the line-up, and not on the website (that I can see, anyway) but also being reported as on the label is Nylon Chen. (According to this, Magic Power is known for having once played a “hip-hop” version of “Elope to the Moon,” which frightens me a bit yet sounds like it’s probably much better than the overly sappy original.) Another fun fact: according to Wikipedia, anyway, Fish Leong’s album earlier this year was the first B’in Music record not distributed by Rock Records, and a sign that they’re leaving their relationship with the big company.

Anyway, there were a fair number of disgruntled fans the first night of the Christmas show, as far too many hadn’t gotten the news that it was a “Mayday and Friends” show, and thought it was just a band. They waited through two hours of other performances before Mayday showed up. (I don’t blame them – I saw the concert on my go-to concert ticket site, and nothing there suggested it was anything but a “DNA”-style show.) To get into the Christmas spirit, Ding Dang sang “Amazing Grace,” which is not really a Christmas song anywhere but in China, Magic Power sang their own version of “Jingle Bells” (which is also not a Christmas song but a generic winter song), and Cosmos People covered Eason Chan’s Christmas song. Still, the opening act performances went on for quite a while as the fans grew more restless.

Some actually started yelling for Mayday, for refunds, or for the current performers to get off the stage as the night wore on and there was no sign of the headliners. When they finally showed up, though (dressed in red for Christmas), the fans jumped to their feet, resumed waving their lightsticks, and sang along. It speaks volumes for the popularity of the band… and just how badly they really do need better PR, something I’ve thought pretty much as long as I’ve been blogging their news (so three and a half years, now). Now, I’m not volunteering – I have a job I love, thank you – but someone needs to step up, especially since incidents like this one don’t do these struggling new artists any favors. And, of course, fans int he US continue to rely on good fortune to hear about North American concerts.

Mayday sang the first ever mainland performance of the Hokkien love song “Is that okay? (好不好),” which would have been great to hear, along with other more standard tour tracks (like “Loneliness Terminator,” “Crazy Life,” and “People Life, Ocean Wild”). The big boffo ending was “Love-ing” sung with all the artists on stage together, which makes me doubly glad I didn’t give up my Christmas plans to go to Shanghai to see this thing. Ah, I’m so mean. Let me get into the Christmas spirit: I’m sure it was lovely.

In addition to cheering on the band and supplying their own sea of blue, the crowd sang “Happy Birthday” to Ashin, who turned 34 on the day of the concert. Considering the fact that he looks 23, I can’t imagine he worries too much over birthdays.

Okay, poplet (like “starlet,” but with pop music… and clearly I’m in a slightly punchy mood) “Alien” Huang (黄鸿升) was thrilled to discover that “rock gods” Ashin and Monster were writing and producing a song for his new album. I, meanwhile, can’t even work up enough interest to read the whole article.

Wang Xingzhi – aka Guanyou’s wife – was once rumored to be dating Zhang Fei (or “Brother Fei”), best known (to me, anyway) for the “Big Brother” program on Taiwanese t.v. The pair are back in the news, with her telling him that the next time he meets a nice girl, he shouldn’t wait around, but get married. (He’s 58 now… at what point does he become a “confirmed bachelor”?) Now, side note: but in looking her up, I found this family photo, which is quite cute.

In other news, famed Chinese rocker Cui Jian admits that’s he doesn’t know much at all about Mayday (which is almost the same as saying they’re not really a rock band – and old theme for mainland rock bands/singers – but taking a more roundabout way to do it). He suggested they needed to expand their market, but of course, he also recalled that rock is something that one must do one’s own way.

So I’ve been so busy, I actually completely forgot about David Tao’s concert in Nanjing at the beginning of the month. But I’ve been offered a reprieve: he has postponed his Shanghai visit until March, which means I’ll have a second chance. (I quite like his “69″ album – that’s named after the year of his birth, people, do not drift elsewhere – and I’ve long liked his music when he’s in a rockish frame of mind.) His staff had a little adventure in Nanjing, though, as one of the them punched a “fan” that he recognized as a scalper – a sign of clear frustration with the system, I imagine.

Um, seriously?

No, there’s no sense bothering with the rest of it once you’re dealing with an outcome like that. On the bright side, though, cheer on mainland band SuperVC (a real band, not a boy band). When asked about their win for best group on the mainland, they noted to reporters that, “We also would like to thank Fahrenheit; while they rely on their faces to succeed, we rely on our abilities.” I love it. And now I’m doubly glad I bought their last album.

Just to catch up, though:

Here is Episode one. Highlights include:

Episode two is here. Some highlights:

I had not realized that the three most important institutions in the United States were the White House, NASA, and NFL Headquarters. I’m not saying I disagree.

So tonight, for the first time, I’m watching live! Here are my thoughts as I watch:

This show is definitely worth the wait; I’m already looking forward to next week.

By the way, just a helpful update for anyone trying to follow Mayday’s example and get into American football: we’re at week thirteen in the season, and the Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints are both still undefeated. Third in the league, however, are my very own Minnesota Vikings, with a 10 and 1 record. (See, Mayday? That’s better than the Patriots – New England is only 7 and 4!) Amazingly, I’ve learned to let go of my resentment for Brett Favre, something made easier by how well he’s playing, though I nonetheless remain hopelessly devoted to Adrian Peterson. As all people of good sense are, of course.